Archive for March, 2014

I’m not crafty. I do not scrapbook, do DIY projects, or tackle anything that involves a glue gun.

However, I recently created a “Laundry Room Makeover” board on Pinterest and completed the renovation. Pinterest was a wonderful source for before and after pictures, detailed tutorials, names and reviews of paints, and even lists of where to find the products and their prices.

I must point out many of these, if not all, were not brand sponsored! For example, like other Pinterest users I posted all the materials used in my after photos. This is an amazing opportunity for brands to increase brand recognition by way of social sharing or “pinning.”

This story is played over and over across the globe. Pinterest is the ultimate source for creative (P)inspiration.

Why use Pinterest?

Pinterest marketing specialist Piqora found that one “pin” generates an average of 78 cents in sales. Pins are 100x more viral than tweets and Pinterest Board pages can rank on Google long after the original post.

Like any social platform, Pinterest might not work equally well for all brands. However, Pinterest can be a great way to share valuable content with your target audience and showcase your brand personality.

Pinterest is obviously the home room for the visual content from clothing designers, photographers, and makeup artists. But the platform can be utilized by non-creatives like real estate agents, marketing thought leaders posting relevant articles, even parents posting ideas about home schooling their children. Almost anyone can be more Pinteresting….

Are pins really content?

Absolutely. But keep in mind the importance of “delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.” Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and of course Pinterest have a specific demographic of users and can be optimized accordingly. What is often overlooked is the importance of relevant and timely content for these platforms.

What should you pin?

What does your target audience of client base want to learn more about? What moves them? What interests them? Find pins related to those topics. Become your follower’s go-to resource.

Regularly visit the What’s Popular section of Pinterest to see what is trending and what really resonates with Pinterest users.

“How to” pins are very popular. Find tutorials your audience can use and pin them, or create your own. Including before and after images.

Infographics are a great way to share a large amount of information in an attractive, inspiring way.

Do not always pin your own content. If you do pin your own content, be sure to do it in a way that drives users to your website.

Pinterest is social, so remember to interact and engage with others. Repin, follow, and make comments.

I found this Pinterest Master Class to be helpful. It is a series of three videos equaling an hour of content.

Do you have a Pinteresting success story to share with the {grow} community? An innovative way you are using Pinterest to drive sales or brand recognition?

Jessica Rogers is a Dallas-based Adjunct Marketing Instructor at Texas A&M University- Commerce and faculty member at Southern New Hampshire University. She is currently working on her PhD in Business with an emphasis on Marketing; her dissertation research is focused on Social Media. Follow her on Twitter and her blog.

One of my friends was posting and tweeting from a conference sponsored by a Fortune 100 company. He had actually been paid to attend this event because he is an “influencer.”

Coincidentally, I was also being paid to be at an event from a different company at the same time, on the other side of the country. How did I get on their list? I have no idea.

“Have we hitched a ride on the influence marketing train?” I asked my friend.

“I don’t know,” he said, “But woo – woo!”

Clearly, opportunities for bloggers will increase as brands recognize the benefits of aligning with people who are powerful online advocates. And for people like me, who have given content away for free, day after day for years, it is nice to be recognized and rewarded for the hard work.

But influence marketing can be a house of cards for both companies and individuals.

Rules of the road

A digital agency recently approached me about a host of new opportunities to make money from blogger outreach programs, I had to put on the brakes and give them some advice and I think this is important enough to share with the blog community, too.

What is the source of my influence? I create content, yes. I engage consistently, of course. But at the end of the day it gets down to trust, right?

That’s why the emerging Citizen Influencers have to be very judicious in their relationships with brands. Likewise, brands have to be discerning about their expectations from influencers.

If brands become too exposed with too many bloggers, both parties will suffer. If the credibility of the blogger declines, the effectiveness of their advocacy is doomed.

“No” is a legitimate strategy

That’s why I am saying “no” to most opportunities right now. I have to be incredibly selective. First, it has to be a company I truly, authentically believe in and second, I have to limit how much I do because if this blog ever becomes filled with spammy sponsored posts or suspicious brand advocacy, you’re going to go away. And you should.

I don’t think I would like my own blog if it starts to look like a NASCAR racing jacket. Although I do love M&Ms.

As we all approach this era of incredible consumer content choice, to stay ahead, we need to emphasize radical honesty. You need to believe in me and what I write every day for me to earn a seat at the content consumption table.

Likewise, I think brands need to do their homework and figure out which bloggers have built real authority and trust, rather than making a call based on number of Twitter followers, for example.

I think we are approaching a time when you can make some decent money as an influencer … and it is already happening for mommy bloggers (some have agents to negotiate brand contracts). But we need to fiercely protect the reader trust that got us here in the first place.

In January, I wrote a post called Content Shock which explained that we are entering a new phase in the evolution of content-based marketing. There are primarily two dynamics driving this change:

The amount of content on the web is literally exploding. By 2020, the amount of web-based information (most of it consumer-driven) is expected to increase by 600%. Think about that for a moment. If you can imagine the vastness of the Internet today, in six years we will have six of those.

Today an average American spends about 10 hours a day consuming content, a number that has risen steadily year by year. But there is a threshold to the amount of attention we will be able to devote to content, which will further challenge a marketer’s ability to get messages through to their audience and stakeholders.

I wrote about a third factor — the development of advanced content filters — as another emerging issue that will make it harder to get our content to emerge as the signal instead of the noise.

My conclusion was that these pressures are bound to thin the herd. Content marketing as we know it will not be a sustainable strategy for some businesses, and it will become more difficult and expensive for almost all of us.

But I concluded this post with a tantalizing question …

Where do we turn to win in an era of Content Shock?

It’s hard to deny these facts or the implication that in an eco-system of way too much stuff, SOMETHING is going to have to change. But what?

How do we break through this information density and win in a hyper-competitive content market?

However, many businesses are already struggling with the cost and complexity of competing in a world being covered up in content. Here are brief descriptions of 10 possible strategies to break through.

1) Shock and Awe

The only sustainable content strategy is to find an unsaturated niche and overwhelm the web with so much quality content that search engines only discover you. Effectively, you are creating content shock for your competitors.

You don’t necessarily have to be the best content creator if you are in this situation, but you have to be first and overwhelming. This is an uneasy fact we don’t often discuss but it is true. The strategy is:

Dominating a niche early has extremely important long-term value because the search engines will continue to recognize and reward the authority you accrue. Great content does not rise to the top. Great content from dominant websites with an established audience rises to the top.

2) Content Partnerships

If our “pipeline” to consumers is being strangled, create new content partnerships through innovations such as:

I’m not sure how sustainable these strategies are in the long-term, and they are not without controversy. There is a danger when you cross that line and turn your content/news site into an infomercial. Still, this trend is going to heat up because traditional news sites are desperate for revenue streams and marketers need new ways to cut through the content clutter.

3. Content as social currency

There is an entire science behind associating content with self-identity of your content consumers. In other words, we consume and share content if it reinforces something about our self-identity. We choose our content like we choose the clothes we wear or the car we drive.

Here is a small example. I noticed on the web that many people I admire were watching Breaking Bad. I began to watch this show because I emotionally associate with these friends.

I posted about my progress with the show as a type of social currency to demonstrate that I am part of the cult around this television series. It was not even a conscious act but the content I consumed and shared subtly became part of my identity.

4. Atomizing content

If people don’t have time for long content, can you get smaller chunks of content through the pipeline? This would explain innovations such as Vine, Pinterest and infographics.

5. Understanding and working through advanced content filters

Jeff Domansky described the current state as “a drunken frat party” of content. Every search algorithm is going to be working hard to personalize the delivery of content and advanced new filters like Zite will make it even more difficult to break through with new ideas and products.

The content marketing formula used to be pretty straight-forward: Create useful, relevant content and optimize it in every way so it shows up at the top of Google search.

That is about to become infinitely more complex. In addition to personal filters, cognitive computing platforms like Apple’s Siri or IBM’s Watson use content as “fuel.” What does marketing look like in that environment? How do we align ourselves with these filter and produce content in forms that can be absorbed and displayed by these algorithms?

6. Eyes on entertainment

In my classes, I emphasize that a focus on consistently producing content that is RITE — Relevant, Interesting, Timely, and Entertaining — will drive the right behaviors to produce shareable content. Of these, I think the big word for the future is “entertaining.” But this is not necessarily going to be easy.

Look at what Chipotle is doing to sell burritos — producing multi-million-dollar mini-movies featuring popular songs and entertainers like Coldplay. That kind of multi-million-dollar quality is not sustainable for most businesses and will hasten the exit of marginal content producers. I think this partially explains why Chipotle’s leading competitor Qdoba just filed for bankruptcy, a victim of Content Shock.

7. The paid imperative

As Christopher Penn recently wrote, success in the future probably can’t depend on organic reach alone — we will have to have some paid component of a content strategy.

This hand is already being played for us, isn’t it? With Facebook’s organic reach diminishing year by year, companies have no choice but to pay for sponsored posts that can reach a larger audience. New platforms that integrate with traditional advertising and media will be a key idea.

8. Hit ‘em where they ain’t

If your competitor has overwhelmed the market with blog content, try videos. If videos are saturated for your business, start a podcast. Are there alternate platforms like Slideshare, Instagram, Pinterest or Google+ where you can make a mark?

In other words, look for alternate delivery channels. Should your business be on the lookout for the next big thing?

9. Borrow a Bigger Pipeline

Most people only look at “paid media” or “earned media” but there is an increasingly powerful third alternative: Borrowed Media.

In a recent Marketing Companion podcast, my co-host Tom Webster commented that the top search results for a new shoe he was looking to buy were all blog posts. Not articles in trade magazines. Not content on the shoe company’s website. Not organic news results. Blog posts.

Let that sink in.

As I wrote in my book Return On Influence (a thorough tutorial on this emerging channel), we are in the era of the Citizen Influencer where passionate, trusted experts wield an incredible amount of power over loyal audiences. Companies are now beginning to recognize this as distinct marketing channel and must develop a core competency in the art and science of influence marketing.

In the past 12 months we have seen the beginning of influence marketing departments and even boutique agencies working this niche.

10. Human Connection.

Every week I receive heart-felt messages from members of the blog community like this: “Each morning I sit down with a cup of coffee and your latest blog post. I feel like you are a friend sitting across the table from me giving me a daily marketing lesson.”

I work hard to create a true connection with my readers, and it is not something I can fake. I really do care about you and I work hard to write in a way that earns your trust every day.

Connecting in a human way is what leads to that trust. Trust leads to loyalty. And I believe that loyalty trumps everything else I have written about in this blog post.

I sincerely believe that “be more human” is the killer app for Content Shock. The best way to build long-term relationships that lead to business benefits isn’t going to be through backlinks, sponsored posts, or native advertising. It is going to be through authentic human connection.

Be. More. Human.

Isn’t that the ultimate goal for a person, a business, or a brand? What ideas did I miss here?

I have attended SXSW for last five years and upon each return, lots of people ask me if it is really worth the time and expense. Perhaps this is on your mind too? Should you plan to attend SXSW next year? Here is an honest and personal perspective.

First you should know a little about me. I don’t like crowds. I am not the kind of personal networker who works a room. I prefer quiet dinners with a friend or two. My party animal days are pretty much over.

In other words, I’m not a typical SXSW kind of guy : )

SXSW is expensive, time-consuming, and the crowds are ridiculous. Even after buying a $700 ticket, the most popular sessions are so crowded it is not unusual to be turned away. I sat on the floor more than once. The city of Austin bursts at the seams … one night I had to wait more than an hour to get a cab.

And yet …

SXSW is an important and spectacular global gathering. This is why I go each year …

Out of the bubble. There is probably no greater gathering of digital intellects anywhere on earth. Attending sessions at SXSW jerks me out of the social media echo chamber to learn about what is going on in other worlds. I go to SXSW to learn and always leave inspired and refreshed.

The electricity of new. The hope and optimism of the world’s greatest shark tank absolutely sizzles. It is fun to watch entrepreneurs from around the world pitch what they hope will be the next great thing.

Business connections. I have met the most wonderful new friends who have become collaborators and customers. Even standing in line for food can become an adventure.

Connecting with friends. It’s amazing to connect with people from the blog community. My favorite locale is the blogger’s lounge where I can normally spot some cool folks.

It’s a lot of fun. Many people (purportedly half) go to SXSW without a badge just to attend the round-the-clock parties. There is music, food and booze at every corner. It’s not unusual to run into Hollywood celebrities, famous authors and titans of business around the conference center.

So what about next year?

Will I attend in 2015? I don’t know. I take things year by year and who knows what will be going on? But I think you should consider going to SXSW at least once in your life if the opportunity arises.

Yes, it’s crowded and maybe even a little exasperating but it is also the World Cup of interactive media and if you want to experience the best in the world you owe it to yourself to give it a shot one year.

If you have any questions or comments about the SXSW experience let me know in the comment section.

By the way, I debuted a new speech on the future of social media at SXSW this year, if you’re interested, here is a re-cap by Geoff Wilson.

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-Mark Schaefer